


Gofod Ein Hunain

by FromAnkyra



Category: Dark Is Rising Sequence - Susan Cooper, Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Anthropologist will, Fluff, Google translated Welsh, M/M, Nerd Will, and fanon tbh, just because bran doesn't remember doesn't mean he and will can't be happy, love letter to fanfic, star trek is fictional in-universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-03
Updated: 2020-04-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:54:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23462023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FromAnkyra/pseuds/FromAnkyra
Summary: All at once, Will was there.Bran and Jane have grown up and fallen into the rhythm of university when Will reenters their lives, still the Will they remember but also don't.
Relationships: Bran Davies/Will Stanton
Kudos: 21





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [KainVixenheim](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KainVixenheim/gifts).



All at once, Will was there. Bran didn’t remember any happy reunion – he didn’t remember a parting, either, but he did remember an absence. Years of loneliness, occasionally sharp, brittle, aware, but more often obscure, nagging behind his left temple, knowing there was something missing, but not what it was. Sometimes, Will had been nonexistent in his life; other times, he’d been present, but barely. A couple of letters exchanged in a year, where they would talk about the mundane. Still, up to a certain point in his life (and he would never be able to say when, exactly, that point was), Will wasn’t there.

And then he was.

On Thursdays, Will would be in the same Songs and Folklore seminar as Bran and Jane, and afterwards, they would all inevitably end up sitting together in the library, until one of them got bored and dragged the other two to the pub.   
On Tuesdays, Bran bumped into Will and Jane together as he went to get his usual lunch between a lecture and an afternoon practice – they would end up all having lunch together.  
And some Saturdays, although Bran couldn’t see a pattern to it, he and Will would be in the flat he shared with Jane. (Jane was always out, and again Bran couldn’t tell what the pattern was, though he suspected it had more to do with her being a busybody than anything else). There’d be a bottle between them, usually wine, although occasionally mead, because he was Bran, and Will was Will. Those Saturdays, they would talk till the wee hours of the morning, and by midnight Bran was innebriated enough that he couldn’t pretend he wasn’t staring at Will’s lips.

Those were the Saturdays Bran treasured. For all that Jane complained that Will was cryptic and evasive, Bran had never found it to be the case. When confronted with a question, Will gave remarkably straightforward answers – there was just something about him that discouraged him from asking the same sorts of questions Jane did. More often than not, when the topic of that strange summer came up, Bran would find himself talking more than Will. 

“Jane knows there’s something she’s forgotten, which is why she keeps asking you. Barney reckons he remembers everything that happened, while Simon says there’s nothing to remember.” He frowned. “Those seem like different things, somehow.”

(Later that night, when Will asked him, quietly, whether he thought there was anything to remember, and whether he wanted to remember it, he shrugged, because he didn’t know the answer.)

Instead of asking the sorts of questions Jane did, Bran would ask about Will’s work, to see him light up with enthusiasm. His dissertation was, unexpectedly, about Star Trek, which had made Bran laugh for a good fifteen minutes before letting his friend elaborate. 

“There was this really interesting phenomena that started appearing among fans of the show. This idea of Fandom – a group of people enjoying a show, or even Science Fiction as a genre – already existed, of course. You’d have fanzines, where people would mail each other self-edited magazines with pieces of short fiction and poems, forming a community around it. But then what happened with Star Trek, is that people started making transformative fiction based on the show. Using the characters and premise, adding new plots and relationships.” Will had that anthropologist’s fervour in his eyes – the same one he got when he was called upon in the seminars he shared with Bran. (He never volunteered himself, despite seemingly always having something to say, so he would get called upon whenever the room was particularly silent).   
“But the thing I’m really fascinated by is how, beyond the canon of the show – the truth as defined by the creators - communities of fans created their own canons, and their own sets of tropes that they would adhere to, and built upon each other’s work. And that, how that understanding built itself, really, is what I’m writing about.”

(It was really a pity, Bran thought, that Jane had never asked Will about this, because he was struggling to optain primary sources, something she’d be brilliant at. He made sure, next time they were all together, that it got mentionned, and years later, when they all attended Conspiracy ‘87 together, Jane thanked him again.)

“Seems a bit too modern for you. And Science Fiction, I wasn’t expecting that. I always expected you’d go the other way, into legends and folklore, like.”

“This is legends and folklore. Things don’t have to be old to have value. Besides,” he smiled that goofy, enthusiastic smile of his (not the serene one he’d sometimes get when he talked about the Nature of Things), “it’s human.”


	2. Chapter 2

“You can’t believe that there’s nothing to remember,” Jane said out of nowhere. The conversation hadn’t been related to the topic (Bran was fairly sure he’d been -ahem- harping on about harps for the past quarter of an hour), but he knew what she was talking about. Whether the question had genuinely come to her on the spot, or that she’d been employing some interrogation technique she’d learned in her journalism classes, Bran wasn’t sure, but she, unlike Will, managed to loosen his tongue.

“Of course I don’t,” he answered, easily. “doesn’t mean I want to remember it, though. I trust Will.”

Jane bit her lip, thoughtfully,

“You don’t feel like there’s something missing? Like part of you that was there isn’t, anymore?”

Bran shook his head.

“If you really think that, why don’t you ask Barney to fill you in? You say he claims to remember everything.”

“All he gives me are fairytales. Half the time, I don’t think he can tell whether they’re things that happened or stories that we playacted. Everything is too heroic, too neat.” She didn’t quite have the scorn in her voice that a child might have for her younger sibling, but there was a shade of it. A disconnect in how seriously they were taking the situation, or at least how seriously they were perceiving it. “What I lost... there was something deeper than that. I wouldn’t have forgotten a game like that.” She shook her head ruefully. “Well, I would have, but I wouldn’t miss it so damn much.”

The yearning in her voice stuck with Bran, so that night, he dug through his drawers for the greenish blue marble he couldn’t seem to lose. He’d given it to Jane in the first place, as he’d felt she’d value it more, but ever the proper young lady, she’d said she couldn’t keep something precious of his. He knocked on her door. 

“Give Will this,” he said, handing her the marble, “next time you see him, and ask him about everything you want to know again. If he asks about the marble, tell him that I thought you should be the one to keep it.”

(Jane seemed a lot happier when he next saw her.)

She never asked him these questions again, but Bran often wondered about how easily he’d answered one of them. He didn’t feel like any part of him was missing, any more. 

Will stayed. Just like he’d intergrated seamlessly into their lives, he managed to remain in them, without the topic ever being bought up. Bran considered asking, when it was late, and he was tipsy, what plans he had for the rest of his life, but there was always something more interesting to talk about, and it always seemed like it would work out in the end.

(And he didn’t feel like any part of him was missing, any more.)

When he finally gathered the courage to kiss Will, and their lips parted afterwards and Will’s formed a silly, belwidered smile, Bran whispered fiercely into his ear.

“Don’t leave again.”

**Author's Note:**

> The title is (presumably, horrifically mangled) "A Space of Our Own", but in google translated Welsh.


End file.
